Financial Services Research

Harris Interactive’s award-winning, full-service Financial Services Research Team combines sector expertise with a rich heritage in market research and agile solutions, allowing us to deliver tailored solutions at the speeds required today. We provide leading companies with impactful insights, advice and guidance they need to make sound, strategic business decisions that ultimately make a difference to their bottom line performance. We have a wealth of experience in stakeholder relationships, brand and marketing communications research, literature testing, product and service development, product lifecycle reviews and regulatory developments.

A Wealth of Financial Services Research Expertise

The financial services sector is complex and contains many diverse sub-sectors and Harris Interactive is able to bring its knowledge and experience to bear in researching all areas of the industry. We conduct market research among a variety of stakeholders, including senior decision makers, IFAs, brokers, consumers, HNWIs, employees, corporate and affinity partners. The team is staffed by individuals with a great deal of knowledge, business understanding and research expertise in the sector and who combine agency experience with time spent on the client side and experience of delivery up to board level.

News and Blogs

For the last couple of months the Bank of England has been preparing all of us for today’s 0.25% increase so it shouldn’t have come as a shock that the base rate has increased, but what does it actually mean to the general public and more importantly people with mortgages which are now more expensive to service per month?...
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The on-going uncertainty of Brexit, Interest Rates and our depreciating currency took a backseat as we returned from the Bank Holiday weekend. Instead, the media served us a plat du jour the last couple of days on how credit-card firms have automatically increased credit card spend limits......
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The main supermarkets each receive a big share of our weekly spend, so what makes regular grocery shoppers reluctant to become customers of supermarket banks too? To understand this landscape, the financial services team at Harris Interactive conducted a short survey using Harris 24....
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Testimonials

“Concept Express was quick, efficient and sufficiently flexible to suit our requirements. The online real time system was a good way to engage our stakeholders and excited real interest in the project. It raised the profile of research internally and challenged – positively – expectations of what could be delivered by when.” Customer Insights Manager – UK High Street Bank

PopUP Communities from Harris Interactive allow you to launch projects within hours, designed and moderated by research experts, tapping directly into our global panel and bringing you engaging output to share instantly with your key decision makers.

How We Help Clients

- In light of regulatory changes, helping a syndicate of insurers to understand and benchmark how well changes to renewal letters have been implemented from the customers’ point of view.

- Tracking the brand strength of a global investment provider amongst HNWI and senior B2B audiences across the globe, a programme we have supported for over 15 years, including helping them to redefine their positioning on two occasions.

- Identifying the investment needs and complexity of structured products for investors with different levels of financial sophistication for an industry body. Outputs included a bespoke online simulator

- Establishing which insurance propositions appeal most to consumers, providing the client with real-time data so they could start to consider the implications during fieldwork.

- Measuring the impact of numeracy skills on financial capability.
Exploring attitudes and behaviours to pensions across different age groups, helping our client shine a light on the UK’s pension crisis, including for PR purposes.

- Helping a price comparison website to identify the appeal of potential new propositions to help it decide whether to enter a new market.

The hi brands study measures brand sustainability across penetration, equity, future relevance and vitality for a wide variety of popular brands. These are the UK's top 5 sustainable Credit Card brands.

The hi brands study measures brand sustainability across penetration, equity, future relevance and vitality for a wide variety of popular brands. These are the UK's top 5 sustainable Price Comparison Website brands.

Experts

Michael Worledge

Financial Services Sector Head

Michael is the Harris Interactive Financial Services sector head. He joined Harris Interactive in 2005 and has been in market research for over 20 years. After working in consumer and pharmaceutical research as well as ops-project management, Michael has specialised in Financial Services research at Harris. He has worked across sub-sectors, initiated and led a qualitative syndicate looking at the future of insurance, and has written two papers which have been finalists for the MRS Financial Services Research Award, winning in 2012 with GIMRA.
Michael has extensive experience in both consumer and B2B market research, has a BSc in French and German from Aston University and is a Certified Member of the Market Research Society.

Vicky Whiting

Research Director

Vicky is a Research Director in the financial services team at Harris Interactive and has 15 years’ experience of delivering market research to the financial services industry. This includes client and agency side roles at The Pensions Regulator, BDRC Continental, ORC International and the Money Advice Service. Through this background, she has developed specialisms in financial capability and later life savings research, including pensions.
Vicky has a degree in Mathematics and Statistics and although her core skills lie in quantitative research design and analysis, she has full methodological expertise and regularly incorporates qualitative techniques to add depth to a research project. She has a managed a range of ad hoc, tracking, B2B and consumer research throughout her career, and enjoys a challenging brief.
Since joining Harris in July 2017, Vicky has worked closely with the advanced analytics team to develop our new brand measurement approach (hi brands®) and apply regression models to examine the impact of numeracy skills on financial capacity.
Vicky is a member of the Market Research Society.